While major international pharmaceutical companies from the Western world are fully committed to producing an FDA and EUA-approved vaccine, there are competitors in other parts of the world looking to provide our planet with a vaccine more quickly than initially thought. What does this mean for pharmaceutical like AstraZeneca ($AZN), Moderna ($MRNA) and Pfizer ($PFE) and others, who go through the entire COVID-19 vaccine development?
China and Russia appear to be increasing their lead over Western competition as news has come out once again this weekend that these countries have begun a massive rollout of vaccine candidates. This process is already underway before clinical trials are completed, presenting an unexpectedly complex geopolitical challenge to the United States. Last week, China’s Sinopharm announced that in the upcoming weeks one of the emergency doses of a vaccine candidate will be shipped to the United Arab Emirates. The ally of the United States is not the only country to enter into negotiations with China. As a matter of fact, several countries in the Middle East have signed agreements with Eastern pharmaceutical companies who promise to
Middle East have signed agreements with Eastern pharmaceutical companies who promise to come up with a vaccine within the coming weeks
India, Brazil, Mexico and Kazakhstan have now agreed to use Sputnik V vaccines in emergency situations. The same goes for Egypt, Jordan and Beirut and a trial with Sinopharm. Egypt had previously signed an agreement with AstraZeneca stating that the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company will provide 30 million doses of the vaccine after FDA approval. Three days after AstraZeneca announced that the Phase 3-clinical trial was being halted due to a complication with a patient, Egypt also decided to start a partnership with Sinopharm.
Is the interest of the Middle East and other Eastern countries a threat to pharmaceuticals from the Western World? So far this does not seem to be the case, even if China and Russia do a massive rollout of their vaccine candidates in early 2021. Zhou Song, one of the directors of Sinopharm, previously indicated that the company expects an initial production of 300 million doses per year. At two doses per person, that would cover 10 procent of the Chinese population. The Russian Direct Investment Fund said it expects to have produced 30 million doses in Russia by the end of 2020, an equivalent to nearly 20 percent of the population.
With that, a vast majority of the world’s population remains awaiting an approved COVID-19 vaccine, which can be answered by the major Western pharmaceutical companies. Recently, a worldwide survey found that one in three people still has doubts about the production, motives and quality of the vaccine, a percentage that will rise sharply with the introduction of Chinese and Russian vaccines in Western countries. This means that previous criticism from doctors to stop the production and research of American and European vaccin-candidates does not seem relevant. There’s no need to worry about the economic consequences with China and Russia taking an irresponsible shortcut.
